Thursday, June 24, 2010

Philadelphia Center for the Book's Arts On South Space is pleased to announce exciting member opportunities at our storefront, located at 626 South Street, Philadelphia, PA.

Our hours will be: July 5 - August 14 12-8 pm Monday-Sunday

August 15 - September12-8 pm Wednesday-Sunday

CALL FOR ENTRY - MEMBER EXHIBITION We are inviting all members to submit work to be included in the Member Exhibition, July 12-August 13, 2010. This exhibition will highlight member work within the PCB community and will be a great way to introduce the general public to PCB. Please consider donating your work for the exhibition opening's silent auction to ensure that we can keep extended open hours for showcasing your work, and to expand the range of events we can host in the space. Members can choose to donate exhibition work to the silent auction on the application form.

CALL FOR ENTRY - SELL WORK IN OUR STORE We are inviting all members to sell work in our store. The store area will showcase the broad range of talent within our membership and you are welcome to sell anything from books to T-shirts to prints and anything else made by your hand. There will be a price limit of $100 for anything sold in the store. Because member support and involvement is extremely important in this endeavor, we are asking that all work be sold on consignment at a percentage set by the artist between 25% and 50%. We are also asking that if you wish to sell in the store, you commit to volunteer for two 4 hour shifts during the 2.5 months we are open.

* Cleaners, painters, carpenters to get the space ready* Assistance in the gallery, store, and reading room, especially August 15 - September 15* Assistance during events (exhibition receptions, film screenings, artist lectures)* Instructors to teach free/low cost community workshops for children and adults* Any other assistance you can provide to us

Sunday, June 20, 2010

THE ONE THING I LEARNED FROM CANCER: Lived Experience Stories from Survivors and Eye Witnesses of the big C...

Open call for poetry, writing, rants, words, line drawings, notes, jpegs of found objects, artifacts of process or other imagery that tells the story about the one thing and the big C and your lived experience.

THE BLACK HUT OFFER & OPEN CALL:

It's our guess that anyone who ever lived through Cancer or witnessed and accompanied a beloved who died from Cancer has a story to tell. And we have our own that need telling and sharing, too.

So...

The goal of our project is to issue this invitation for collaboration, and then to collect & combine our stories in ways that provide for the art and healing that comes from sharing our lived experience and felt sense of knowing with one another through creative means.

Selected works will be memorialized in a book. A celebration of lived experience stories will be held. An "altared book" exhibition will be offered following publication and the time to altar the books (yes, altar--meaning, to make the book into an altar for one's self or other beloveds who have learned through this profound teacher, Cancer).

Group Altaring sessions/classes/experiences will be offered in a studio environment at dates and locations TBD.

Contributing to the book is free--offered and received freely without the promise of compensation of any kind. (of course, if we find money, create support streams, strike riches or make it big, we promise to share the wealth with all who contribute).

Contributing allows The Black Hut leeway to include, promote, accept (or reject) contributor offerings and to publish findings, blog entries, promotional material and documentation on its website, blog, facebook page, in the book and in books written about the book.

***The Black Hut is a collaboration between transformative artists Raven Reyes and elizaBeth Benson. We work to support each other in making our work and bridging it into the world. We met in the circles held throughout JFKU’s Transformative Arts Master’s Degree program and we continue to bridge the distance between art and community, space and place, the sacred and profane. We continue to meet in the crossroads of art and life, show up as ourselves, do what we do, invite people to play, and be who we are in all the worlds we bridge….

Keep track of the progress of this project by becoming part of our facebook family: click here.

Philadelphia Center for the Book will be at the Fleisher Art Memorial's ARTspiration Festival, Saturday, June 26th from 10am-4pm. Join members of the PCB Board as we share the simple art of creating one page books! The event will be held at 719 Catherine Street, in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Philadelphia.

From the filmmakers:"At 40 years of age, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. abandoned the traditional American Dream to follow his own. Unsatisfied with his comfortable, middle-class life, Amos traded in his computer for a printing press and his white collar for a pair of overalls. Armed with life, liberty, peanuts, and a meager yearly income of $7,000, Amos cranked out a new, mutinous declaration of independence. Proceed and Be Bold! joins Amos for a titillating retelling of his story, while examining the pretensions and provisions of the art world...."

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

PCB is pleased to announce that we will have a storefront space on one of Philadelphia's liveliest, most visited streets this summer through the Arts on South program, which loans unrented retail stores on South Street for use as galleries and art spaces. We have been invited to participate by the Philadelphia Magic Gardens and South Street Head House District, who are administering the program.

From July 1 - September 15, we plan to host a variety of events and create a number of opportunities for both our members and the community at large. Our space will host a gallery, a retail store, a reading room, and a work area, to support exhibition openings, workshops for children and adults, artist talks, poetry and artist book readings, member's salons, and many more activities we are yet to plan. Our space, formerly EyeChic Boutique, will be located at 626 South Street, Philadelphia, PA. Please note: our mailing address, P.O. Box 387, has NOT changed. Do not send correspondence to the store address!

To undertake such an amazing task, we have hired Jessica Hoffman to be our gallery and store manager. Jessica recently completed her MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking at the University of the Arts, where her work took the form of artists' books, video, and installation. Jessica worked as a Studio Assistant and Workshop Coordinator for Project Basho, a community photography studio in Philadelphia. She has done conservation internships at both the Wagner Free Institute of Science and the American Philosophical Society, and she was instrumental in supporting the Hybrid Book Fair held last June. Jessica is talented, organized, enthusiastic, and has the full support of the PCB Board in carrying out this project.

As President of PCB, I would like to invite you all to a potluck on Saturday, July 10 from 4:00-7:00pm to view the space, meet Jessica, and mingle with other PCB members. A formal space is something PCB has never had, and something we would like to have in the near future. The Arts on South program allows us to experiment with programming and artist opportunities to see what works for our members and for the organization as a whole. For this experiment to work, we need your participation. Keep an eye out over the next two weeks for more bulletins detailing how you can get involved.

This is such an exciting time for PCB with events, exhibitions, and opportunities coming to us all the time. We appreciate the support and enthusiasm coming from all of our members and friends, and I look forward to speaking with all of you, in person, at our new storefront this summer. If you have any immediate questions, please feel free to contact me directly at book@philadelphiacenterforthebook.org.

Monday, June 14, 2010

From the filmmakers:"At 40 years of age, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. abandoned the traditional American Dream to follow his own. Unsatisfied with his comfortable, middle-class life, Amos traded in his computer for a printing press and his white collar for a pair of overalls. Armed with life, liberty, peanuts, and a meager yearly income of $7,000, Amos cranked out a new, mutinous declaration of independence. Proceed and Be Bold! joins Amos for a titillating retelling of his story, while examining the pretensions and provisions of the art world...."

Philadelphia Center for the Book will be at the Fleisher Art Memorial's ARTspiration Festival, Saturday, June 26th from 10am-4pm. Join members of the PCB Board as we share the simple art of creating one page books! The event will be held at 719 Catherine Street, in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Philadelphia.

THEME: Pop-up books captivate and excite the child in all of us. They cometo life as three-dimensional works of art hidden inside the pages of a book.Pop-Up Now! is looking for handmade artist books that pop-up, move, slide,twirl, whirl, light up, or even sound off. This national, juried exhibitionof handmade movable artist books will be held at 23 Sandy Gallery inconjunction with the biennial conference of the Movable Book Society to beheld in Portland, September 23-25, 2010.

According to Wikipedia, "The term pop-up book is often applied to anythree-dimensional or movable book, although properly the umbrella termmovable book covers pop-ups, transformations, tunnel books, volvelles,flaps, pull-tabs, pop-outs, pull-downs, and more, each of which performs ina different manner."

MEDIA: This exhibit is open to hand bound book arts related artworkscreated as either edition or one-of-a-kind. Artist books, sculptural books,book objects are all encouraged as long as the book has at least oneinteractive, movable or pop-up element. Your books can employ any medium,any style, or any size.